Who would govern the country?

From eNews, March 18, 2004

The smoke hadn't cleared from the rubble at the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center when University alumnus and U.S. political
analyst Norm Ornstein turned his fertile mind to a disastrous
series of "what ifs" triggered by the terrorist attacks of
September 11. The following is edited from "What If?," a story in
Minnesota magazine about Ornstein's efforts to address
governing succession in the age of terrorism. What if Flight
93--the fourth hijacked plane--had crashed into the While House or
the U.S. Capitol dome, killing or incapacitating hundreds of U.S.
senators and representatives? Who would rise--and how--to lead the
nation in the chaotic times that would follow? "It's clear that
throughout the history of the American republic we've gone through
gaps in time when there's been a real lack of governing continuity,
and it's often taken a crisis to move us enough to try to fix
them," says Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research. "Take just one example:
Woodrow Wilson ended up comatose for many months at the end of his
presidency. We know now from ample documentation that during this
period his wife ran the country because there was nothing in the
Constitution to deal with presidential incapacitation. We didn't
get around to fixing that problem until the 26th amendment was
ratified following the Kennedy assassination." Ornstein formed a
blue-ribbon commission to look into possible solutions. The
Continuity of Government Commission, composed of a "who's who" of
American politics, issued its first report in spring 2003, which
called for a constitutional amendment delegating to Congress the
power to redress the issue of succession. For the complete story by
Richard Broderick, as published in the March-April issue of
Minnesota, the University of Minnesota Alumni Association
magazine, see
the current issue.